How hard is the water in Billings County, ND?
11.8 grains per gallon
A softener will pay its way here.
The median hardness measured in Billings County, ND is 203 mg/L as calcium carbonate, which is 11.8 gpg. That is very hard on the USGS scale. It comes from 174 samples at 5 sites between 1990 and 2023, drawn from every sampling site in the county, wells and surface water together.
How much it varies here
Half the sites came in between 11.4 and 12.6 gpg. The whole middle of that range gives the same answer, so a test of your own tap is unlikely to change it. Confidence in the county figure: medium (how it is measured).
What to do next
At 11.8 gpg a softener pays its way here. Before you buy, check the quoted unit's grain capacity against the sizing table below, and ask whether it regenerates on demand, which uses less salt than a timer. Call your utility for its own report if you are on city water.
More on sizing a softener for your household.
From 0.6 to 17.9 gpg
The softest single sample on record in Billings County was 10.8 mg/L and the hardest 307 mg/L, a 28-fold gap. The top quarter of sites read above 12.6 gpg and the bottom quarter below 11.4 gpg. So even here some sites draw water soft enough to need nothing at all.
Wells 0.6 gpg, rivers and lakes 12.2 gpg
1 groundwater samples from 1 wells put the median at 10.8 mg/L. 173 surface samples from 4 sites put it at 208.8 mg/L. In Billings County the rivers and lakes come out 11.6 gpg harder. Here the surface water reads harder than the wells, which often points to streams fed by limestone springs or irrigation return flow. A utility here that draws from the aquifer can deliver noticeably different water from a private well next door.
What a softener would cost to run
For a household of 3, a 24,000-grain unit covers a week between regenerations. Expect about 258 lb of salt a year (7 bags of 40 lb, about $47), and roughly 2,346 gallons of regeneration water. Installed, most units run $1,000 to $4,500; spread over 15 years with salt, that is about $147 a year.
Sizing at 11.8 gpg
| People | Grains a day | Unit | Salt a year |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 708 | 24,000 | 86 lb |
| 2 | 1,416 | 24,000 | 172 lb |
| 4 | 2,832 | 24,000 | 345 lb |
| 6 | 4,248 | 32,000 | 517 lb |
Billings County against the rest of North Dakota
Among the 53 North Dakota counties with data, Billings County is number 46 of 53 counting from the hardest. Across the whole country it is harder than 58% of counties.
Softest in North Dakota: Hettinger County at 1.1 gpg. Hardest: Walsh County at 54 gpg. Closest to Billings County: Bowman County (11.7), Dunn County (11.7), Pierce County (12.8).